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Cholesterol, Co-Enzyme Q10  and your health

( IF YOU ARE ON STATIN-type drugs)

Especially read this if you are taking any statin drugs such as Lipitor, Zocor, Pravachol.

Statin drugs work by blocking the normal enzyme pathway in our body that forms cholesterol. They also block two other enzymes from being produced.  The other two enzymes are ubiquinone (also called Co-Enzyme Q10)  and Dolichol.  These enzymes are ESSENTIAL for life to continue. Any decrease in their levels result in almost every symptom and disease that we mistakenly blame on age. Failing memory, muscle cramps, back pain, fibromyalgia, and dozens more, including the ‘statin shuffle’ that you may think is Parkinson’s disease.

If you are on these medications DO NOT STOP taking them!

Your doctor prescribed them for a reason. The concern is that you should also be taking a supplement enzyme to replace the ones that are now being reduced in the process.

My goal is for you to become educated in your own health, so that you can ask your doctor why you are NOT being given the supplement as mentioned, to protect you from the drug side effect.

QUESTION EVERY DRUG YOU ARE PUT ON !

The drug companies have been aware of this for over 12 years, and have been asked since before that time to add labels to their boxes of pills that state these enzymes are depleted and that the patient should also receive supplementation replacement of these enzymes if using the statin drugs. The drug companies have ignored the requests, and every side effect  may well be misdiagnosed as a ‘new’ and ‘different’ disease, for which they will sell you ‘another’ drug ( along with the statins that may be the cause in the first place!) – after all, billions of dollars in will never be sacrificed over a few little side-effects!

The next 3 pages has a short description of the problem of using statins, but the next 32 pages is more interesting reading! – If you are on the drugs, it’s your life! And more importantly you health, pain and suffering! Why put up with it till you die?

·        We’ve all heard about the fact that excessive LDL (bad) cholesterol can be an indicator of increased risk of getting heart disease, the leading cause of death in America!

When your bad (LDL) cholesterol levels skyrocket, it is no laughing matter. Ignored, this can lead to severe health problems including stroke, kidney damage, diabetes mellitus and even death.

Your first reaction may be to visit your family doctor, in which case you could be given one of many prescription (statins) drugs to take for the rest of your life. Sadly, most of these drugs have the potential for many negative side effects including fatigue, dizziness, depression, impotence, liver damage and more.

·        The drugs that doctors use to treat the new disease are called statins–sold under a variety of names including Lipitor (atorvastatin) , Zocor (simvastatin), Mevacor (lovastatin) and Pravachol (pravastatin).

·        Pharmaceutical drug company marketing is encouraging doctors and the health profession to treat high cholesterol levels with total aggression, and have redefined what a ‘high’ cholesterol is. Where the disease was once known as ‘hypercholesterolaemia” ( and applied only to middle-aged men whose cholesterol is over 240 with other risk factors, such as smoking or overweight), after the  Cholesterol Consensus Conference in 1984, the parameters changed quickly to  “anyone (male or female) with cholesterol over 200”  so that they too now received the dreaded diagnosis and a prescription for pills. Recently that number has been moved down to 180. If you have had a heart attack, you get to take cholesterol-lowering medicines even if your cholesterol is already very low–after all, you have committed the sin of having a heart attack so your cholesterol must therefore be too high. The penance is a lifetime of cholesterol-lowering medications along with a boring low-fat diet. But why wait until you have a heart attack? Current advice  recommends cholesterol testing and treatment for young adults and even children.

·        Because Cholesterol is now classified as evil ( haven’t all the adverts proven this and convinced you that you MUST get rid of your cholesterol?), the statin drugs are here to save us  by totally blocking the pathway in the cycle that forms the cholesterol.

·        What isn’t mentioned is that cholesterol is one of the essential enzymes that we need for life! In a genetic disease where cholesterol can’t be formed, the result is a baby (that doesn’t live long!) that is  mentally retarded, microcephalic (very small head), small for his age, profoundly anemic, acidotic and febrile. He also had cataracts.

Guess where we are headed if our cholesterol production is blocked? ….YES! - DEMENTIA!!!!

·        Every cell membrane in our body contains cholesterol because this cholesterol is what makes our cells waterproof–without cholesterol we could not have a different biochemistry on the inside and the outside of the cell. When cholesterol levels are insufficient, the cell membrane becomes leaky or porous, and the body interprets this as an major emergency, releasing a flood of corticoid hormones that work by sequestering (pulling out) cholesterol from one part of the body and transporting it to areas where it is lacking. Like the little Dutch boy trying to stick his finger in a hole in the dyke to stop the ocean getting in! Cholesterol is the body’s ultimate repair substance: scar tissue contains high levels of cholesterol, including scar tissue in the arteries. 

Cholesterol is the precursor to vitamin D, necessary for numerous biochemical processes including mineral metabolism.( without Vitamin D we get the disease “Rickets”.

·        Bile salts, required for the digestion of fat, are made of cholesterol. Those who suffer from low cholesterol often have trouble digesting fats. Cholesterol also functions as a powerful antioxidant, thus protecting us against cancer and aging.

Cholesterol is extremely vital to proper neurological function. It plays a key role in the formation of memory and the uptake of hormones in the brain, including serotonin, the body’s feel-good chemical. When cholesterol levels drop too low, the serotonin receptors cannot work. Cholesterol is the main organic molecule in the brain, constituting over half the dry weight of the cerebral cortex.

·        Give your poor mother more statins, and pretend her memory loss is due to simple dementia, for which the drug companies will be able to sell you some extra pills (while still taking your lipitor!). The main article below describes all this in greater detail.

Finally, cholesterol is the precursor to ALL  the hormones produced in the adrenal cortex including glucocorticoids, which regulate blood sugar levels, and mineralocorticoids, which regulate mineral balance. Corticoids are the cholesterol-based adrenal hormones that the body uses in response to stress of various types; it promotes healing and balances the tendency to inflammation. The adrenal cortex also produces sex hormones, including testosterone, estrogen and progesterone, out of cholesterol. Thus, low cholesterol–whether due to an innate error of metabolism or induced by cholesterol-lowering diets and drugs–can be expected to disrupt the production of adrenal hormones and lead to blood sugar problems, edema, mineral deficiencies, chronic inflammation, difficulty in healing, allergies, asthma, reduced libido, infertility and various reproductive problems. NO WONDER THERE is there such a great demand today for Viagra and for drugs for problems in getting or maintaining an erection?!

·        Cholesterol is one of three end products in what is known as the mevalonate chain (the path heading to production of cholesterol). The two others are ubiquinone and dilochol. Ubiquinone or Co-Enzyme Q10 is a critical cellular nutrient biosynthesized in the mitochondria. It plays a role in ATP production in the cells and functions as an electron carrier to cytochrome oxidase, our main respiratory enzyme. The heart requires high levels of Co-Q10. A form of Co-Q10 called ubiquinone is found in all cell membranes where it plays a role in maintaining membrane integrity so critical to nerve conduction and muscle integrity. Co-Q10 is also vital to the formation of elastin and collagen. Side effects of Co-Q10 deficiency include muscle wasting leading to weakness and severe back pain, heart failure (the heart is a muscle!), neuropathy and inflammation of the tendons and ligaments, often leading to rupture. Interfering in any way in the production of this enzyme will lead to a horrible death

Dolichols also play a role of immense importance. In the cells they direct various proteins manufactured in response to DNA directives to their proper targets, ensuring that the cells respond correctly to genetically programmed instruction. Thus statin drugs can lead to unpredictable chaos on the cellular level, much like a computer virus that wipes out certain pathways or files.

·        In a study of dialysis patients, those with higher cholesterol levels had lower mortality than those with low cholesterol!

·        Doctors have discovered that injections of a certain substance can reverse heart disease in some patients. The therapy has helped reduce the amount of plaque in the arteries, thereby negating the need for angioplasty and open heart surgery. That substance is HDL-cholesterol.

·        The Melbourne Women’s Midlife Health Project measured cholesterol levels annually in a group of 326 women aged 52-63 years. During the eighth annual visit, subjects took a test that assessed memory. They found that higher serum concentrations of LDL-cholesterol and relatively recent increases in total cholesterol and LDL-cholesterol were associated with better memory in healthy middle-aged women (J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 2003;74:1530-1535.)

BELOW IS THE COMPLETE ARTICLE COLLECTION ON  STATIN DRUG USE – it may be long but it contains results of dozens of medical trials on statin drugs, results you won’t hear about!

http://www.westonaprice.org/moderndiseases/statin.html

Dangers of Statin Drugs: What You Haven’t Been Told About Popular Cholesterol-Lowering Medicines

By Sally Fallon and Mary G. Enig, PhD   ( click on the name for complete article and references about the authors)

Hypercholesterolemia is the health issue of the 21st century. It is actually an invented disease, a “problem” that emerged when health professionals learned how to measure cholesterol levels in the blood. High cholesterol exhibits no outward signs–unlike other conditions of the blood, such as diabetes or anemia, diseases that manifest telltale symptoms like thirst or weakness–hypercholesterolemia requires the services of a physician to detect its presence. Many people who feel perfectly healthy suffer from high cholesterol–in fact, feeling good is actually a symptom of high cholesterol!

Doctors who treat this new disease must first convince their patients that they are sick and need to take one or more expensive drugs for the rest of their lives, drugs that require regular checkups and blood tests. But such doctors do not work in a vacuum–their efforts to convert healthy people into patients are bolstered by the full weight of the US government, the media and the medical establishment, agencies that have worked in concert to disseminate the cholesterol dogma and convince the population that high cholesterol is the forerunner of heart disease and possibly other diseases as well.

Who suffers from hypercholesterolemia?   Read the medical literature of 25 or 30 years ago and you’ll get the following answer: any middle-aged man whose cholesterol is over 240 with other risk factors, such as smoking or overweight. After the Cholesterol Consensus Conference in 1984, the parameters changed; anyone (male or female) with cholesterol over 200 could receive the dreaded diagnosis and a prescription for pills. Recently that number has been moved down to 180. If you have had a heart attack, you get to take cholesterol-lowering medicines even if your cholesterol is already very low–after all, you have committed the sin of having a heart attack so your cholesterol must therefore be too high. The penance is a lifetime of cholesterol-lowering medications along with a boring low-fat diet. But why wait until you have a heart attack? Since we all labor under the stigma of original sin, we are all candidates for treatment. Current edicts stipulate cholesterol testing and treatment for young adults and even children.

The drugs that doctors use to treat the new disease are called statins–sold under a variety of names including Lipitor (atorvastatin) , Zocor (simvastatin), Mevacor (lovastatin) and Pravachol (pravastatin).

How Statins Work

The diagram below illustrates the pathways involved in cholesterol production. The process begins with acetyl-CoA, a two-carbon molecule sometimes referred to as the “building block of life.” Three acetyl-CoA molecules combine to form six-carbon hydroxymethyl glutaric acid (HMG). The step from HMG to mevalonate requires an enzyme, HMG-CoA reductase. Statin drugs work by inhibiting this enzyme–hence the formal name of HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors. Herein lies the potential for numerous side effects, because statin drugs inhibit not just the production of cholesterol, but a whole family of intermediary substances, many if not all of which have important biochemical functions in their own right.

Consider the findings of pediatricians at the University of California, San Diego who published a description of a child with an hereditary defect of mevalonic kinase, the enzyme that facilitates the next step beyond HMG-CoA reductase.¹ The child was mentally retarded, microcephalic (very small head), small for his age, profoundly anemic, acidotic and febrile. He also had cataracts. Predictably, his cholesterol was consistently low–70-79 mg/dl. He died at the age of 24 months. The child represents an extreme example of cholesterol inhibition, but his case illuminates the possible consequences of taking statins in strong doses or for a lengthy period of time–depression of mental acuity, anemia, acidosis, frequent fevers and cataracts.

Cholesterol is one of three end products in the mevalonate chain. The two others are ubiquinone and dilochol. Ubiquinone or Co-Enzyme Q10 is a critical cellular nutrient biosynthesized in the mitochondria. It plays a role in ATP production in the cells and functions as an electron carrier to cytochrome oxidase, our main respiratory enzyme. The heart requires high levels of Co-Q10. A form of Co-Q10 called ubiquinone is found in all cell membranes where it plays a role in maintaining membrane integrity so critical to nerve conduction and muscle integrity. Co-Q10 is also vital to the formation of elastin and collagen. Side effects of Co-Q10 deficiency include muscle wasting leading to weakness and severe back pain, heart failure (the heart is a muscle!), neuropathy and inflammation of the tendons and ligaments, often leading to rupture.

Dolichols also play a role of immense importance. In the cells they direct various proteins manufactured in response to DNA directives to their proper targets, ensuring that the cells respond correctly to genetically programmed instruction. Thus statin drugs can lead to unpredictable chaos on the cellular level, much like a computer virus that wipes out certain pathways or files.

Squalene, the immediate precursor to cholesterol, has anti-cancer effects, according to research.

The fact that some studies have shown that statins can prevent heart disease, at least in the short term, is most likely explained not by the inhibition of cholesterol production but because they block the creation of mevalonate. Reduced amounts of mevalonate seem to make smooth muscle cells less active, and platelets less able to produce thromboxane. Atherosclerosis begins with the growth of smooth muscle cells in side artery walls and thromboxane is necessary for blood clotting.

Cholesterol Synthesis

Cholesterol

Of course, statins inhibit the production of cholesterol–they do this very well. Nowhere is the failing of our medical system more evident than in the wholesale acceptance of cholesterol reduction as a way to prevent disease–have all these doctors forgotten what they learned in biochemistry 101 about the many roles of cholesterol in the human biochemistry? Every cell membrane in our body contains cholesterol because cholesterol is what makes our cells waterproof–without cholesterol we could not have a different biochemistry on the inside and the outside of the cell. When cholesterol levels are not adequate, the cell membrane becomes leaky or porous, a situation the body interprets as an emergency, releasing a flood of corticoid hormones that work by sequestering cholesterol from one part of the body and transporting it to areas where it is lacking. Cholesterol is the body’s repair substance: scar tissue contains high levels of cholesterol, including scar tissue in the arteries.

Cholesterol is the precursor to vitamin D, necessary for numerous biochemical processes including mineral metabolism. The bile salts, required for the digestion of fat, are made of cholesterol. Those who suffer from low cholesterol often have trouble digesting fats. Cholesterol also functions as a powerful antioxidant, thus protecting us against cancer and aging.

Cholesterol is vital to proper neurological function. It plays a key role in the formation of memory and the uptake of hormones in the brain, including serotonin, the body’s feel-good chemical. When cholesterol levels drop too low, the serotonin receptors cannot work. Cholesterol is the main organic molecule in the brain, constituting over half the dry weight of the cerebral cortex.

Finally, cholesterol is the precursor to all the hormones produced in the adrenal cortex including glucocorticoids, which regulate blood sugar levels, and mineralocorticoids, which regulate mineral balance. Corticoids are the cholesterol-based adrenal hormones that the body uses in response to stress of various types; it promotes healing and balances the tendency to inflammation. The adrenal cortex also produces sex hormones, including testosterone, estrogen and progesterone, out of cholesterol. Thus, low cholesterol–whether due to an innate error of metabolism or induced by cholesterol-lowering diets and drugs–can be expected to disrupt the production of adrenal hormones and lead to blood sugar problems, edema, mineral deficiencies, chronic inflammation, difficulty in healing, allergies, asthma, reduced libido, infertility and various reproductive problems.

Enter the Statins

Statin drugs entered the market with great promise. They replaced a class of pharmaceuticals that lowered cholesterol by preventing its absorption from the gut. These drugs often had immediate and unpleasant side effects, including nausea, indigestion and constipation, and in the typical patient they lowered cholesterol levels only slightly. Patient compliance was low: the benefit did not seem worth the side effects and the potential for use very limited. By contrast, statin drugs had no immediate side effects: they did not cause nausea or indigestion and they were consistently effective, often lowering cholesterol levels by 50 points or more. During the last 20 years, the industry has mounted an incredible promotional campaign–enlisting scientists, advertising agencies, the media and the medical profession in a blitz that turned the statins into one of the bestselling pharmaceuticals of all time. Sixteen million Americans now take Lipitor, the most popular statin, and drug company officials claim that 36 million Americans are candidates for statin drug therapy. What bedevils the industry is growing reports of side effects that manifest many months after the commencement of therapy; the November 2003 issue of Smart Money magazine reports on a 1999 study at St. Thomas’ Hospital in London (apparently unpublished), which found that 36 percent of patients on Lipitor’s highest dose reported side effects; even at the lowest dose, 10 percent reported side effects.²

Muscle Pain and Weakness

The most common side effect is muscle pain and weakness, a condition called rhabdomyolysis, most likely due to the depletion of Co-Q₁₀, a nutrient that supports muscle function. Dr. Beatrice Golomb of San Diego, California is currently conducting a series of studies on statin side effects. The industry insists that only 2-3 percent of patients get muscle aches and cramps but in one study, Golomb found that 98 percent of patients taking Lipitor and one-third of the patients taking Mevachor (a lower-dose statin) suffered from muscle problems.³ A message board devoted to Lipitor at forum.ditonline.com (update 09 JUL 2007: reader alerted us the forum is now defunct) contained more than 800 posts, many detailing severe side effects. The Lipitor board at www.rxlist.com contains more than 2,600 posts (click on Message Boards at upper left and then choose Lipitor; also note that as of 09 JUL 2007 there are 3,857 messages).

The test for muscle wasting or rhabdomyolysis is elevated levels of a chemical called creatine kinase (CK). But many people experience pain and fatigue even though they have normal CK levels.⁴

Tahoe City resident Doug Peterson developed slurred speech, balance problems and severe fatigue after three years on Lipitor–for two and a half years, he had no side effects at all.⁵ It began with restless sleep patterns–twitching and flailing his arms. Loss of balance followed and the beginning of what Doug calls the “statin shuffle”–a slow, wobbly walk across the room. Fine motor skills suffered next. It took him five minutes to write four words, much of which was illegible. Cognitive function also declined. It was hard to convince his doctors that Lipitor could be the culprit, but when he finally stopped taking it, his coordination and memory improved.

John Altrocchi took Mevacor for three years without side effects; then he developed calf pain so severe he could hardly walk. He also experienced episodes of temporary memory loss.

For some, however, muscle problems show up shortly after treatment begins. Ed Ontiveros began having muscle problems within 30 days of taking Lipitor. He fell in the bathroom and had trouble getting up. The weakness subsided when he went off Lipitor. In another case, reported in the medical journal Heart, a patient developed rhabdomyolysis after a single dose of a statin.⁶ Heel pain from plantar fasciitis (heel spurs) is another common complaint among those taking statin drugs. One correspondent reported the onset of pain in the feet shortly after beginning statin treatment. She had visited an evangelist, requesting that he pray for her sore feet. He enquired whether she was taking Lipitor. When she said yes, he told her that his feet had also hurt when he took Lipitor.⁷

Active people are much more likely to develop problems from statin use than those who are sedentary. In a study carried out in Austria, only six out of 22 athletes with familial hypercholesterolemia were able to endure statin treatment.⁸ The others discontinued treatment because of muscle pain.

By the way, other cholesterol-lowering agents besides statin drugs can cause joint pain and muscle weakness. A report in Southern Medical Journal described muscle pains and weakness in a man who took Chinese red rice, an herbal preparation that lowers cholesterol.⁹ Anyone suffering from myopathy, fibromyalgia, coordination problems and fatigue needs to look at low cholesterol plus Co-Q₁₀ deficiency as a possible cause.

Neuropathy

Polyneuropathy, also known as peripheral neuropathy, is characterized by weakness, tingling and pain in the hands and feet as well as difficulty walking. Researchers who studied 500,000 residents of Denmark, about 9 percent of that country’s population, found that people who took statins were more likely to develop polyneuropathy.¹⁰ Taking statins for one year raised the risk of nerve damage by about 15 percent–about one case for every 2,200 patients. For those who took statins for two or more years, the additional risk rose to 26 percent.

According to the research of Dr. Golomb, nerve problems are a common side effect from statin use; patients who use statins for two or more years are at a four to 14-fold increased risk of developing idiopathic polyneuropathy compared to controls.¹¹ She reports that in many cases, patients told her they had complained to their doctors about neurological problems, only to be assured that their symptoms could not be related to cholesterol-lowering medications.

The damage is often irreversible. People who take large doses for a long time may be left with permanent nerve damage, even after they stop taking the drug.

The question is, does widespread statin-induced neuropathy make our elderly drivers (and even not-so-elderly drivers) more accident prone? In July of 2003, an 86-year-old driver with an excellent driving record plowed into a farmers’ market in Santa Monica, California, killing 10 people. Several days later, a most interesting letter from a Lake Oswego, Oregon woman appeared in the Washington Post:¹²

“My husband, at age 68, backed into the garage and stepped on the gas, wrecking a lot of stuff. He said his foot slipped off the brake. He had health problems and is on medication, including a cholesterol drug, which is now known to cause problems with feeling in one’s legs.

“In my little community, older drivers have missed a turn and taken out the end of a music store, the double doors of the post office and the front of a bakery. In Portland, a bank had to do without its drive-up window for some time.

“It is easy to say that one’s foot slipped, but the problem could be lack of sensation. My husband’s sister-in-law thought her car was malfunctioning when it refused to go when a light turned green, until she looked down and saw that her food was on the brake. I have another friend who mentioned having no feeling in her lower extremities. She thought about having her car retrofitted with hand controls but opted for the handicapped bus instead.”

Heart Failure

We are currently in the midst of a congestive heart failure epidemic in the United States–while the incidence of heart attack has declined slightly, an increase in the number heart failure cases has outpaced these gains. Deaths attributed to heart failure more than doubled from 1989 to 1997.¹³ (Statins were first given pre-market approval in 1987.) Interference with production of Co-Q₁₀ by statin drugs is the most likely explanation. The heart is a muscle and it cannot work when deprived of Co-Q₁₀.

Cardiologist Peter Langsjoen studied 20 patients with completely normal heart function. After six months on a low dose of 20 mg of Lipitor a day, two-thirds of the patients had abnormalities in the heart’s filling phase, when the muscle fills with blood. According to Langsjoen, this malfunction is due to Co-Q₁₀ depletion. Without Co-Q₁₀, the cell’s mitochondria are inhibited from producing energy, leading to muscle pain and weakness. The heart is especially susceptible because it uses so much energy.¹⁴

Co-Q₁₀ depletion becomes more and more of a problem as the pharmaceutical industry encourages doctors to lower cholesterol levels in their patients by greater and greater amounts. Fifteen animal studies in six different animal species have documented statin-induced Co-Q₁₀ depletion leading to decreased ATP production, increased injury from heart failure, skeletal muscle injury and increased mortality. Of the nine controlled trials on statin-induced Co-Q₁₀ depletion in humans, eight showed significant Co-Q₁₀ depletion leading to decline in left ventricular function and biochemical imbalances.¹⁵

Yet virtually all patients with heart failure are put on statin drugs, even if their cholesterol is already low. Of interest is a recent study indicating that patients with chronic heart failure benefit from having high levels of cholesterol rather than low. Researchers in Hull, UK followed 114 heart failure patients for at least 12 months.¹⁶ Survival was 78 percent at 12 months and 56 percent at 36 months. They found that for every point of decrease in serum cholesterol, there was a 36 percent increase in the risk of death within 3 years.

Dizziness

Dizziness is commonly associated with statin use, possibly due to pressure-lowering effects. One woman reported dizziness one half hour after taking Pravachol.¹⁷ When she stopped taking it, the dizziness cleared up. Blood pressure lowering has been reported with several statins in published studies. According to Dr. Golumb, who notes that dizziness is a common adverse effect, the elderly may be particularly sensitive to drops in blood pressure.¹⁸

Cognitive Impairment

The November 2003 issue of Smart Money¹⁹ describes the case of Mike Hope, owner of a successful ophthalmologic supply company: “There’s an awkward silence when you ask Mike Hope his age. He doesn’t change the subject or stammer, or make a silly joke about how he stopped counting at 21. He simply doesn’t remember. Ten seconds pass. Then 20. Finally an answer comes to him. ‘I’m 56,’ he says. Close, but not quite. ‘I will be 56 this year.’ Later, if you happen to ask him about the book he’s reading, you’ll hit another roadblock. He can’t recall the title, the author or the plot.” Statin use since 1998 has caused his speech and memory to fade. He was forced to close his business and went on Social Security 10 years early. Things improved when he discontinued Lipitor in 2002, but he is far from complete recovery–he still cannot sustain a conversation. What Lipitor did was turn Mike Hope into an old man when he was in the prime of life.

Cases like Mike’s have shown up in the medical literature as well. An article in Pharmacotherapy, December 2003, for example, reports two cases of cognitive impairment associated with Lipitor and Zocor.²⁰ Both patients suffered progressive cognitive decline that reversed completely within a month after discontinuation of the statins. A study conducted at the University of Pittsburgh showed that patients treated with statins for six months compared poorly with patients on a placebo in solving complex mazes, psychomotor skills and memory tests.²¹

Dr. Golomb has found that 15 percent of statin patients develop some cognitive side effects.²² The most harrowing involve global transient amnesia–complete memory loss for a brief or lengthy period–described by former astronaut Duane Graveline in his book Lipitor: Thief of Memory.²³ Sufferers report baffling incidents involving complete loss of memory–arriving at a store and not remembering why they are there, unable to remember their name or the names of their loved ones, unable to find their way home in the car. These episodes occur suddenly and disappear just as suddenly. Graveline points out that we are all at risk when the general public is taking statins–do you want to be in an airplane when your pilot develops statin-induced amnesia?

While the pharmaceutical industry denies that statins can cause amnesia, memory loss has shown up in several statin trials. In a trial involving 2502 subjects, amnesia occurred in 7 receiving Lipitor; amnesia also occurred in 2 of 742 subjects during comparative trials with other statins. In addition, “abnormal thinking” was reported in 4 of the 2502 clinical trial subjects.²⁴ The total recorded side effects was therefore 0.5 percent; a figure that likely under-represents the true frequency since memory loss was not specifically studied in these trials.

Cancer

In every study with rodents to date, statins have caused cancer.²⁵ Why have we not seen such a dramatic correlation in human studies? Because cancer takes a long time to develop and most of the statin trials do not go on longer than two or three years. Still, in one trial, the CARE trial, breast cancer rates of those taking a statin went up 1500 percent.²⁶ In the Heart Protection Study, non-melanoma skin cancer occurred in 243 patients treated with simvastatin compared with 202 cases in the control group.²⁷

Manufacturers of statin drugs have recognized the fact that statins depress the immune system, an effect that can lead to cancer and infectious disease, recommending statin use for inflammatory arthritis and as an immune suppressor for transplant patients.²⁸

Pancreatic Rot

The medical literature contains several reports of pancreatitis in patients taking statins. One paper describes the case of a 49-year-old woman who was admitted to the hospital with diarrhea and septic shock one month after beginning treatment with lovastatin.29 She died after prolonged hospitalization; the cause of death was necrotizing pancreatitis. Her doctors noted that the patient had no evidence of common risk factors for acute pancreatitis, such as biliary tract disease or alcohol use. “Prescribers of statins (particularly simvastatin and lovastatin) should take into account the possibility of acute pancreatitis in patients who develop abdominal pain within the first weeks of treatment with these drugs,” they warned.

Depression

Numerous studies have linked low cholesterol with depression. One of the most recent found that women with low cholesterol are twice as likely to suffer from depression and anxiety. Researchers from Duke University Medical Center carried out personality trait measurements on 121 young women aged 18 to 27.³⁰ They found that 39 percent of the women with low cholesterol levels scored high on personality traits that signalled proneness to depression, compared to 19 percent of women with normal or high levels of cholesterol. In addition, one in three of the women with low cholesterol levels scored high on anxiety indicators, compared to 21 percent with normal levels. Yet the author of the study, Dr. Edward Suarez, cautioned women with low cholesterol against eating “foods such as cream cakes” to raise cholesterol, warning that these types of food “can cause heart disease.” In previous studies on men, Dr. Suarez found that men who lower their cholesterol levels with medication have increased rates of suicide and violent death, leading the researchers to theorize “that low cholesterol levels were causing mood disturbances.”

How many elderly statin-takers eke through their golden years feeling miserable and depressed, when they should be enjoying their grandchildren and looking back with pride on their accomplishments? But that is the new dogma–you may have a long life as long as it is experienced as a vale of tears.

Any Benefits?

Most doctors are convinced–and seek to convince their patients–that the benefits of statin drugs far outweigh the side effects. They can cite a number of studies in which statin use has lowered the number of coronary deaths compared to controls. But as Dr. Ravnskov has pointed out in his book The Cholesterol Myths,³¹ the results of the major studies up to the year 2000–the 4S, WOSCOPS, CARE, AFCAPS and LIPID studies–generally showed only small differences and these differences were often statistically insignificant and independent of the amount of cholesterol lowering achieved. In two studies, EXCEL, and FACAPT/TexCAPS, more deaths occurred in the treatment group compared to controls. Dr. Ravnskov’s 1992 meta-analysis of 26 controlled cholesterol-lowering trials found an equal number of cardiovascular deaths in the treatment and control groups and a greater number of total deaths in the treatment groups.³² An analysis of all the big controlled trials reported before 2000 found that long-term use of statins for primary prevention of heart disease produced a 1 percent greater risk of death over 10 years compared to a placebo.³³

Recently published studies do not provide any more justification for the current campaign to put as many people as possible on statin drugs.

Honolulu Heart Program (2001)

This report, part of an ongoing study, looked at cholesterol lowering in the elderly. Researchers compared changes in cholesterol concentrations over 20 years with all-cause mortality.³⁴ To quote: “Our data accords with previous findings of increased mortality in elderly people with low serum cholesterol, and show that long-term persistence of low cholesterol concentration actually increases risk of death. Thus, the earlier that patients start to have lower cholesterol concentrations, the greater the risk of death. . . The most striking findings were related to changes in cholesterol between examination three (1971-74) and examination four (1991-93). There are few studies that have cholesterol concentrations from the same patients at both middle age and old age. Although our results lend support to previous findings that low serum cholesterol imparts a poor outlook when compared with higher concentrations of cholesterol in elderly people, our data also suggest that those individuals with a low serum cholesterol maintained over a 20-year period will have the worst outlook for all-cause mortality [emphasis ours].”

MIRACL (2001)

The MIRACL study looked at the effects of a high dose of Lipitor on 3086 patients in the hospital after angina or nonfatal MI and followed them for 16 weeks.³⁵ According to the abstract: “For patients with acute coronary syndrome, lipid-lowering therapy with atorvastatin, 80 mg/day, reduced recurrent ischemic events in the first 16 weeks, mostly recurrent symptomatic ischemia requiring rehospitalization.” What the abstract did not mention was that there was no change in death rate compared to controls and no significant change in re-infarction rate or need for resuscitation from cardiac arrest. The only change was a significant drop in chest pain requiring rehospitalization.

ALLHAT (2002)

ALLHAT (Antihypertensive and Lipid-Lowering Treatment to Prevent Heart Attack Trial), the largest North American cholesterol-lowering trial ever and the largest trial in the world using Lipitor, showed mortality of the treatment group and controls after 3 or 6 years was identical.³⁶ Researchers used data from more than 10,000 participants and followed them over a period of four years, comparing the use of a statin drug to “usual care,” namely maintaining proper body weight, no smoking, regular exercise, etc., in treating subjects with moderately high levels of LDL cholesterol. Of the 5170 subjects in the group that received statin drugs, 28 percent lowered their LDL cholesterol significantly. And of the 5185 usual-care subjects, about 11 percent had a similar drop in LDL. But both groups showed the same rates of death, heart attack and heart disease.

Heart Protection Study (2002)

Carried out at Oxford University,³⁷ this study received widespread press coverage; researchers claimed “massive benefits” from cholesterol-lowering,³⁸ leading one commentator to predict that statin drugs were “the new aspirin.”³⁹ But as Dr. Ravnskov points out,⁴⁰ the benefits were far from massive. Those who took simvastatin had an 87.1 percent survival rate after five years compared to an 85.4 percent survival rate for the controls and these results were independent of the amount of cholesterol lowering. The authors of the Heart Protection Study never published cumulative mortality data, even though they received many requests to do so and even though they received funding and carried out a study to look at cumulative data. According to the authors, providing year-by-year mortality data would be an “inappropriate” way of publishing their study results.⁴¹

PROSPER (2002)

PROSPER (Prospective Study of Pravastatin in the Elderly at Risk) studied the effect of pravastatin compared to placebo in two older populations of patients of which 56 percent were primary prevention cases (no past or symptomatic cardiovascular disease) and 44 percent were secondary prevention cases (past or symptomatic cardiovascular disease).⁴² Pravastatin did not reduce total myocardial infarction or total stroke in the primary prevention population but did so in the secondary. However, measures of overall health impact in the combined populations, total mortality and total serious adverse events were unchanged by pravastatin as compared to the placebo and those in the treatment group had increased cancer. In other words: not one life saved.

J-LIT (2002)

Japanese Lipid Intervention Trial was a 6-year study of 47,294 patients treated with the same dose of simvastatin.⁴³ Patients were grouped by the amount of cholesterol lowering. Some patient had no reduction in LDL levels, some had a moderate fall in LDL and some had very large LDL reductions. The results: no correlation between the amount of LDL lowering and death rate at five years. Those with LDL cholesterol lower than 80 had a death rate of just over 3.5 at five years; those whose LDL was over 200 had a death rate of just over 3.5 at five years.

Meta-Analysis (2003)

In a meta-analysis of 44 trials involving almost 10,000 patients, the death rate was identical at 1 percent of patients in each of the three groups–those taking atorvastatin (Lipitor), those taking other statins and those taking nothing.⁴⁴ Furthermore, 65 percent of those on treatment versus 45 percent of the controls experienced an adverse event. Researchers claimed that the incidence of adverse effects was the same in all three groups, but 3 percent of the atorvastatin-treated patients and 4 percent of those receiving other statins withdrew due to treatment-associated adverse events, compared with 1 percent of patients on the placebo.

Statins and Plaque (2003)

A study published in the American Journal of Cardiology casts serious doubts on the commonly held belief that lowering your LDL-cholesterol, the so-called bad cholesterol, is the most effective way to reduced arterial plaque.⁴⁵ Researchers at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City examined the coronary plaque buildup in 182 subjects who took statin drugs to lower cholesterol levels. One group of subjects used the drug aggressively (more than 80 mg per day) while the balance of the subjects took less than 80 mg per day. Using electron beam tomography, the researchers measured plaque in all of the subjects before and after a study period of more than one year. The subjects were generally successful in lowering their cholesterol, but in the end there was no statistical difference in the two groups in the progression of arterial calcified plaque. On average, subjects in both groups showed a 9.2 percent increase in plaque buildup.

Statins and Women (2003)

No study has shown a significant reduction in mortality in women treated with statins. The University of British Columbia Therapeutics Initiative came to the same conclusion, with the finding that statins offer no benefit to women for prevention of heart disease.⁴⁶ Yet in February of 2004, Circulation published an article in which more than 20 organizations endorsed cardiovascular disease prevention guidelines for women with several mentions of “preferably a statin.”⁴⁷

ASCOT-LLA (2003)

ASCOT-LLA (Anglo-Scandinavian Cardiac Outcomes Trial–Lipid Lowering Arm) was designed to assess the benefits of atorvastatin (Lipitor) versus a placebo in patients who had high blood pressure with average or lower-than-average cholesterol concentrations and at least three other cardiovascular risk factors.⁴⁸ The trial was originally planned for five years but was stopped after a median follow-up of 3.3 years because of a significant reduction in cardiac events. Lipitor did reduce total myocardial infarction and total stroke; however, total mortality was not significantly reduced. In fact, women were worse off with treatment. The trial report stated that total serious adverse events “did not differ between patients assigned atorvastatin or placebo,” but did not supply the actual numbers of serious events.

Cholesterol Levels in
Dialysis Patients (2004)

In a study of dialysis patients, those with higher cholesterol levels had lower mortality than those with low cholesterol.⁴⁹ Yet the authors claimed that the “inverse association of total cholesterol level with mortality in dialysis patients is likely due to the cholesterol-lowering effect of systemic inflammation and malnutrition, not to a protective effect of high cholesterol concentrations.” Keeping an eye on further funding opportunities, the authors concluded: “These findings support treatment of hypercholesterolemia in this population.”

PROVE-IT (2004)

PROVE-IT (PRavastatin Or AtorVastatin Evaluation and Infection Study),⁵⁰ led by researchers at Harvard University Medical School, attracted immense media attention. “Study of Two Cholesterol Drugs Finds One Halts Heart Disease,” was the headline in the New York Times.⁵¹ In an editorial entitled “Extra-Low Cholesterol,” the paper predicted that “The findings could certainly presage a significant change in the way heart disease patients are treated. It should also start a careful evaluation of whether normally healthy people could benefit from a sharp drug-induced reduction in their cholesterol levels.”⁵²

The Washington Post was even more effusive, with a headline “Striking Benefits Found in Ultra-Low Cholesterol.”⁵³ “Heart patients who achieved ultra-low cholesterol levels in one study were 16 percent less likely to get sicker or to die than those who hit what are usually considered optimal levels. The findings should prompt doctors to give much higher doses of drugs known as statins to hundreds of thousands of patients who already have severe heart problems, experts said. In addition, it will probably encourage physicians to start giving the medications to millions of healthy people who are not yet on them, and to boost dosages for some of those already taking them to lower their cholesterol even more, they said.”

The study compared two statin drugs, Lipitor and Pravachol. Although Bristol Myers-Squibb (BMS), makers of Pravachol, sponsored the study, Lipitor (made by Pfizer) outperformed its rival Pravachol in lowering LDL. The “striking benefit” was a 22 percent rate of death or further adverse coronary events in the Lipitor patients compared to 26 percent in the Pravachol patients.

PROVE-IT investigators took 4162 patient who had been in the hospital following an MI or unstable angina. Half got Pravachol and half got Lipitor. Those taking Lipitor had the greatest reduction of LDL-cholesterol–LDL in the Pravachol group was 95, in the Lipitor group it was 62–a 32 percent greater reduction in LDL levels and a 16 percent reduction in all-cause mortality. But that 16 percent was a reduction in relative risk. As pointed out by Red Flags Daily columnist Dr. Malcolm Kendrick, the absolute reduction in the rate of the death rate of those taking Lipitor rather than Pravachol, was one percent, a decrease from 3.2 percent to 2.2 percent over 2 years.⁵⁴ Or, to put it another way, a 0.5 percent absolute risk reduction per year–these were the figures that launched the massive campaign for cholesterol-lowering in people with no risk factors for heart disease, not even high cholesterol.

And the study was seriously flawed with what Kendrick calls “the two-variables conundrum.” “It is true that those with the greatest LDL lowering were protected against death. However, . . . those who were protected not only had a greater degree of LDL lowering, they were also on a different drug! which is rather important, yet seems to have been swept aside on a wave of hype. If you really want to prove that the more you lower the LDL level, the greater the protection, then you must use the same drug. This achieves the absolutely critical requirement of any scientific experiment, which is to remove all possible uncontrolled variables. . . As this study presently stands, because they used different drugs, anyone can make the case that the benefits seen in the patients on atorvastatin [Lipitor] had nothing to do with greater LDL lowering; they were purely due to the direct drug effects of atorvastatin.” Kendrick notes that the carefully constructed J-LIT study, published 2 years earlier, found no correlation whatsoever between the amount of LDL lowering and death rate. This study had ten times as many patients, lasted almost three times as long and used the same drug at the same dose in all patients. Not surprisingly, J-LIT attracted virtually no media attention.

PROVE-IT did not look at side effects but Dr. Andrew G. Bodnar, senior vice president for strategy and medical and external affairs at Bristol Meyer Squibb, makers of the losing statin, indicated that liver enzymes were elevated in 3.3 percent of the Lipitor group but only in 1.1 percent of the Pravachol group, noting that when liver enzyme levels rise, patients must be advised to stop taking the drug or reduce the dose.⁵⁵ And withdrawal rates were very high: thirty-three percent of patients discontinued Pravachol and 30 percent discontinued Lipitor after two years due to adverse events or other reasons.⁵⁶

REVERSAL (2004)

In a similar study, carried out at the Cleveland Clinic, patients were given either Lipitor or Pravachol. Those receiving Lipitor achieved much lower LDL-cholesterol levels and a reversal in “the progression of coronary plaque aggregation.”⁵⁷ Those who took Lipitor had plaque reduced by 0.4 percent over 18 months, based on intravascular ultrasound (not the more accurate tool of electron beam tomography); Dr. Eric Topol of the Cleveland Clinic claimed these decidedly unspectacular results “Herald a shake-up in the field of cardiovascular prevention.. . . the implications of this turning point–that is, of the new era of intensive statin therapy–are profound. Even today, only a fraction of the patients who should be treated with a statin are actually receiving such therapy. . . More than 200 million people worldwide meet the criteria for treatment, but fewer than 25 million take statins.”⁵⁸ Not surprisingly, an article in The Wall Street Journal noted “Lipitor Prescriptions Surge in Wake of Big Study.”⁵⁹

But as Dr. Ravnskov points out, the investigators looked at change in atheroma volume, not the change in lumen area, “a more important parameter because it determines the amount of blood that can be delivered to the myocardium. Change of atheroma volume cannot be translated to clinical events because adaptive mechansims try to maintain a normal lumen area during early atherogenesis.”⁶⁰ 

Other Uses

With such paltry evidence of benefit, statin drugs hardly merit the hyperbole heaped upon them. Yet the industry maintains a full court press, urging their use for greater and greater numbers of people, not only for cholesterol lowering but also as treatment for other diseases–cancer, multiple sclerosis, osteoporosis, stroke, macular degeneration, arthritis and even mental disorders such as memory and learning problems, Alzheimers and dementia.⁶¹ New guidelines published by the American College of Physicians call for statin use by all people with diabetes older than 55 and for younger diabetes patients who have any other risk factor for heart disease, such as high blood pressure or a history of smoking.⁶² David A. Drachman, professor of neurology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School calls statins “Viagra for the brain.”⁶³ Other medical writers have heralded the polypill, composed of a statin drug mixed with a blood pressure medication, aspirin and niacin, as a prevent-all that everyone can take. The industry is also seeking the right to sell statins over the counter.

Can honest assessment find any possible use for these dangerous drugs? Dr. Peter Langsjoen of Tyler, Texas, suggests that statin drugs are appropriate only as a treatment for cases of advanced Cholesterol Neurosis, created by the industry’s anti-cholesterol propaganda. If you are concerned about your cholesterol, a statin drug will relieve you of your worries.

Creative Advertising

The best advertising for statin drugs is free front-page coverage following gushy press releases. But not everyone reads the paper or goes in for regular medical exams, so statin manufacturers pay big money for creative ways to create new users. For example, a new health awareness group called the Boomer Coalition supported ABC’s Academy Awards telecast in March of 2004 with a 30-second spot flashing nostalgic images of celebrities lost to cardiovascular disease–actor James Coburn, baseball star Don Drysdale and comedian Redd Foxx. While the Boomer Coalition sounds like a grass roots group of health activists, it is actually a creation of Pfizer, manufacturers of Lipitor. “We’re always looking for creative ways to break through what we’ve found to be a lack of awareness and action,” says Michal Fishman, a Pfizer spokeswoman. “We’re always looking for what people really think and what’s going to make people take action,” adding that there is a stigma about seeking treatment and many people “wrongly assume that if they are physically fit, they aren’t at risk for heart disease.”⁶⁴ The Boomer Coalition website allows visitors to “sign up and take responsibility for your heart health,” by providing a user name, age, email address and blood pressure and cholesterol level.

A television ad in Canada admonished viewers to “Ask your doctor about the Heart Protection Study from Oxford University.” The ad did not urge viewers to ask their doctors about EXCEL, ALLHAT, ASCOT, MIRACL or PROSPER, studies that showed no benefit–and the potential for great harm–from taking statin drugs.

The Costs

Statin drugs are very expensive–a course of statins for a year costs between $900 and $1400. They constitute the mostly widely sold pharmaceutical drug, accounting for 6.5 percent of market share and 12.5 billion dollars in revenue for the industry. Your insurance company may pay most of that cost, but consumers always ultimately pay with higher insurance premiums. Payment for statin drugs poses a huge burden for Medicare, so much so that funds may not be available for truly lifesaving medical measures.

In the UK, according to the National Health Service, doctors wrote 31 million prescriptions for statins in 2003, up from 1 million in 1995 at a cost of 7 billion pounds–and that’s just in one tiny island.⁶⁵ In the US, statins currently bring in $12.5 billion annually for the pharmaceutical industry. Sales of Lipitor, the number-one-selling statin, are projected to hit $10 billion in 2005.

Even if statin drugs do provide some benefit, the cost is very high. In the WOSCOP clinical trial where healthy people with high cholesterol were treated with statins, the five-year death rate for treated subjects was reduced by a mere 0.6 percent. As Dr. Ravnskov points out,66 to achieve that slight reduction about 165 healthy people had to be treated for five years to extend one life by five years. The cost for that one life comes to $1.2 million dollars. In the most optimistic calculations, the costs to save one year of life in patients with CHD is estimated at $10,000, and much more for healthy individuals. “This may not sound unreasonable,” says Dr. Ravnskov. “Isn’t a human life worth $10,000 or more?”

“The implication of such reasoning is that to add as many years as possible, more than half of mankind should take statin drugs every day from an early age to the end of life. It is easy to calculate that the costs for such treatment would consume most of any government’s health budget. And if money is spent to give statin treatment to all healthy people, what will remain for the care of those who really need it? Shouldn’t health care be given primarily to the sick and the crippled?”

REFERENCES

1. Hoffman G. N Engl J Med 1986;314:1610-24

2. Eleanor Laise. The Lipitor Dilemma, Smart Money: The Wall Street Journal Magazine of Personal Business, November 2003.

3. Eleanor Laise. The Lipitor Dilemma, Smart Money: The Wall Street Journal Magazine of Personal Business, November 2003.

4. Beatrice A. Golomb, MD, PhD on Statin Drugs, March 7, 2002. www.coloradohealthsite.org/topics/interviews/golomb.html

5. Melissa Siig. Life After Lipitor: Is Pfizer product a quick fix or dangerous drug? Residents experience adverse reactions. Tahoe World, January 29, 2004.

6. Jamil S, Iqbal P. Heart 2004 Jan;90(1):e3.

7. Personal communication, Laura Cooper, May 1, 2003.

8. Sinzinger H, O’Grady J. Br J Clin Pharmacol. 2004 Apr;57(4):525-8.

9. Smith DJ and Olive KE. Southern Medical Journal 96(12):1265-1267, December 2003.

10. Gaist D and others. Neurology 2002 May 14;58(9):1321-2.

11. Statins and the Risk of Polyneuropathy. http://coloradohealthsite.org/CHNReports/statins_polyneuropathy.html

12. The Struggles of Older Drivers, letter by Elizabeth Scherdt. Washington Post, June 21, 2003.

13. Langsjoen PH. The clinical use of HMG Co-A reductase inhibitors (statins) and the associated depletion of the essential co-factor coenzyme Q10: a review of pertinent human and animal data. http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dailys/02/May02/052902/02p-0244-cp00001-02-Exhibit_A-vol1.pdf

14. Eleanor Laise. The Lipitor Dilemma, Smart Money: The Wall Street Journal Magazine of Personal Business, November 2003.

15. Langsjoen PH. The clinical use of HMG Co-A reductase inhibitors (statins) and the associated depletion of the essential co-factor coenzyme Q10: a review of pertinent human and animal data. http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dailys/02/May02/052902/02p-0244-cp00001-02-Exhibit_A-vol1.pdf

16. Clark AL and others. J Am Coll Cardiol 2003;42:1933-1943.

17. Personal communication, Jason DuPont, MD, July 7, 2003

18. Sandra G Boodman. Statins’ Nerve Problems. Washington Post, September 3, 2002.

19. Eleanor Laise. The Lipitor Dilemma, Smart Money: The Wall Street Journal Magazine of Personal Business, November 2003,

20. King, DS. Pharmacotherapy 25(12):1663-7, Dec, 2003.

21. Muldoon MF and others. Am J Med 2000 May;108(7):538-46.

22. Email communication, Beatrice Golomb, July 10, 2003.

23. Duane Graveline, MD. Lipitor: Thief of Memory, 2004, www.buybooksontheweb.com.

24. Lopena OF. Pharm D, Pfizer, Inc., written communication, 2002. Quoted in an email communication from Duane Graveline, spacedoc@webtv.net

25. Newman TB, Hulley SB. JAMA 1996;27:55-60

26. Sacks FM and others. N Eng J Med 1996;385;1001-1009.

27. Heart Protection Study Collaborative Group. Lancet 2002;360:7-22.

28. Leung BP and others. J Immunol. Feb 2003 170(3);1524-30; Palinski W. Nature Medicine Dec 2000 6;1311-1312.

29. J Pharm Technol 2003;19:283-286.

30. Low Cholesterol Linked to Depression. BBC Online Network, May 25,1999.

31. Uffe Ravnskov, MD, PhD. The Cholesterol Myths. NewTrends Publishing, 2000.

32. Ravnskov U. BMJ. 1992;305:15-19.

33. Jackson PR. Br J Clin Pharmacol 2001;52:439-46.

34. Schatz IJ and others. Lancet 2001 Aug 4;358:351-355.

35. Schwartz GG and others. J Am Med Assoc. 2001;285:1711-8.

36. The ALLHAT Officers and Coordinators for the ALLHAT Collaborative Research Group. JAMA 2002;288:2998-3007.

37. Heart Protection Study Collaborative Group. Lancet 2002;360:7-22.

38. Medical Research Council/British Heart Foundation Heart Protection Study.Press release. Life-saver: World’s largest cholesterol-lowering trial reveals massive benefits for high-risk patients. Available at www.ctsu.ox.ac.uk/~hps/pr.shtml.

39. Kmietowicz A. BMJ 2001;323:1145

40. Ravnskov U. BMJ 2002;324:789

41. Email communication, Eddie Vos, February 13, 2004 and posted at www.health-heart.org/comments.htm#PetoCollins.

42. Shepherd J and others. Lancet 2002;360:1623-1630.

43. Matsuzaki M and others. Circ J. 2002 Dec;66(12):1087-95.

44. Hecht HS, Harmon SM. Am J Cardiol 2003; 92:670-676

45. Hecht HS and others. Am J Cardiol 2003;92:334-336

46. Jenkins AJ. BMJ 2003 Oct 18;327(7420):933.

47. Circulation, 2004 Feb 17;109(6):714-21.

48. Sever PS and others. Lancet 2003;361:1149-1158.

49. Liu Y and others. JAMA 2004;291:451-459.

50. Cannon CP and others. N Engl J Med 2004 Apr 8;350(15):1495-504. Epub 2004 Mar 08.

51. Gina Kolata. Study of Two Cholesterol Drugs Finds One Halts Heart Disease. The New York Times, November 13, 2003.

52. Extra-Low Cholesterol, The New York Times, March 10, 2003

53. Rob Stein. Striking Benefits Found in Ultra-Low Cholesterol, The Washington Post, March 9, 2004

54. Dr. Malcolm Kendrick. PROVE IT- PROVE WHAT? http://www.redflagsweekly.com/applications/ui/login.php?Next=/kendrick/2004_mar10.php&e=4

55. Health Sciences Institute e-alert, www.hsibaltimore.com, March 11, 2004

56. Email communication, Joel Kauffman, April 15, 2004.

57. Nissen SE and others. JAMA 2004 Mar 3;291(9):1071-80.

58. Dr. Malcolm Kendrick. PROVE IT- PROVE WHAT? http://www.redflagsweekly.com/applications/ui/login.php?Next=/kendrick/2004_mar10.php&e=4

59. Scott Hensley. The Statin Dilemma: How Sluggish Sales Hurt Merck, Pfizer. The Wall Street Journal, July 25, 2003.

60. Ravnskov, U. Unpublished letter. ravnskov@tele2.se .

61. Cholesterol–And Beyond: Statin Drugs Have Cut Heart Disease. Now They Show Promise Against Alzheimer’s, Multiple Sclerosis & Osteoporosis. Newsweek, July 14. 2003.

62. John O’Neil. Treatments: Statins and Diabetes: New Advice. New York Times, April 20, 2004.

63. Peter Jaret. Statins’ Burst of Benefits. Los Angeles Times, July 2. 2003.

64. Behind the ‘Boomer Coalition,’ A Heart Message from Pfizer, Wall Street Journal, March 10, 2004

65. Paul J. Fallon, personal communication, March, 2004.

66. Uffe Ravnskov, MD, PhD. The Cholesterol Myths. NewTrends Publishing, 2000, pp 208-210.

Sidebar Articles

A Better Way

If statins work, they do so by reducing inflammation, not because they lower cholesterol. Statins block the production of mevalonate leading to inhibition of platelet clumping and reduction of inflammation in the artery walls. However, simple changes in the diet can achieve the same effect without also cutting off the body’s vital supply of cholesterol:

• Avoid trans fats, known to contribute to inflammation
• Avoid refined sugars, especially fructose, known to stimulate clumping of the blood platelets
• Take cod liver oil, an excellent dietary source of anti-inflammatory vitamin A, vitamin D and EPA
• Eat plenty of saturated fats, which encourage the production of anti-inflammatory prostaglandins
• Take evening primrose, borage or black currant oil, sources of GLA which the body uses to make anti-inflammatory prostaglandins
• Eat foods high in copper, especially liver; copper deficiency is associated with clot formation and inflammation in the arteries
• Eat coconut oil and coconut products; coconut oil protects against bacteria and viruses that can lead to inflammation in the artery wall
• Avoid reduced-fat milks and powdered milk products (such as powdered whey); they contain oxidized cholesterol, shown to cause irritation of the artery wall

Dietary Trials

Doctors and other health professionals claim there is ample proof that animal fats cause heart disease while they confidently advise us to adopt a low-fat diet; actually the literature contains only two studies involving humans that compared the outcome (not markers like cholesterol levels) of a diet high in animal fat with a diet based on vegetable oils, and both showed that animal fats are protective.

The Anti-Coronary Club project, launched in 1957 and published in 1966 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, compared two groups of New York businessmen, aged 40 to 59 years. One group followed the so-called “Prudent Diet” consisting of corn oil and margarine instead of butter, cold breakfast cereals instead of eggs and chicken and fish instead of beef; a control group ate eggs for breakfast and meat three times per day. The final report noted that the Prudent Dieters had average serum cholesterol of 220 mg/l, compared to 250 mg/l in the eggs-and-meat group. But there were eight deaths from heart disease among Prudent Dieter group, and none among those who ate meat three times a day

In a study published in the British Medical Journal, 1965, patients who had already had a heart attack were divided into three groups: one group got polyunsaturated corn oil, the second got monounsaturated olive oil and the third group was told to eat animal fat. After two years, the corn oil group had 30 percent lower cholesterol, but only 52 percent of them were still alive. The olive oil groups fared little better–only 57 percent were alive after two years. But of the group that ate mostly animal fat, 75 percent were still alive after two years.

What About Aspirin?

The other drug recommended for prevention of heart attacks and strokes is aspirin. Estimates suggest that 20 million persons are taking aspirin daily for prevention of vascular accidents. Yet at least four studies have shown no benefit. A study using Bufferin (aspirin and magnesium) showed no reduction in fatal heart attacks and no improvement in survival rate but a 40 percent decrease in the number of nonfatal heart attacks. Commentators reported these results as showing the benefit of aspirin, ignoring the fact that magnesium is of proven benefit in heart disease. Aspirin inhibits the enzyme Delta-6 Desaturase, needed for the production of Gamma-Linoleic Acid (GLA) and important anti-inflammatory prostaglandins. This fact explains many of aspirin’s side effects, including gastrointestinal bleeding and increased risk of macular degeneration and cataract formation. Other side effects include increased risk of pancreatic cancer, acid reflux, asthma attacks, kidney damage, liver problems, ulcers, anemia, hearing loss, allergic reactions, vomiting, diarrhea, dizziness and even hallucinations (James Howenstine, NewsWithViews.com, April 21, 2004).

Late-Breaking Cholesterol News

Researchers at the Tulane University School of Medicine used electron beam tomography (EBT) to measure the progression of plaque buildup in heart-attack patients taking statin drugs. EBT is a very accurate way to measure occlusion from calcium in the arteries. Contrary to expectations, the researchers discovered that the progression of coronary artery calcium (CAC) was significantly greater in patients receiving statins compared with event-free subjects despite similar levels of LDL-lowering. Said the researchers: “Continued expansion of CAC may indicate failure of some patients to benefit from statin therapy and an increased risk of having cardiovascular events (Arterioscler Thromb Vasc Biol, April 1, 2004).

Doctors have discovered that injections of a certain substance can reverse heart disease in some patients. The therapy has helped reduce the amount of plaque in the arteries, thereby negating the need for angioplasty and open heart surgery. That substance is HDL-cholesterol (www.ivanhoe.com/newsalert, March 1, 2004).

The Melbourne Women’s Midlife Health Project measured cholesterol levels annually in a group of 326 women aged 52-63 years. During the eighth annual visit, subjects took a test that assessed memory. They found that higher serum concentrations of LDL-cholesterol and relatively recent increases in total cholesterol and LDL-cholesterol were associated with better memory in healthy middle-aged women (J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 2003;74:1530-1535.)

Read the Fine Print

The picture in a recent ad for Lipitor implies that cholesterol-lowering is for everyone, even slim young women. However, in the fine print we learn that Lipitor “has not been shown to prevent heart disease or heart attacks”! If the makers of Lipitor need to provide this disclaimer, after millions of dollars invested in studies, why should anyone risk side effects by taking their drug?

About the Author

Mary G. Enig, PhD is an expert of international renown in the field of lipid biochemistry. She has headed a number of studies on the content and effects of trans fatty acids in America and Israel, and has successfully challenged government assertions that dietary animal fat causes cancer and heart disease. Recent scientific and media attention on the possible adverse health effects of trans fatty acids has brought increased attention to her work. She is a licensed nutritionist, certified by the Certification Board for Nutrition Specialists, a qualified expert witness, nutrition consultant to individuals, industry and state and federal governments, contributing editor to a number of scientific publications, Fellow of the American College of Nutrition and President of the Maryland Nutritionists Association. She is the author of over 60 technical papers and presentations, as well as a popular lecturer. Dr. Enig is currently working on the exploratory development of an adjunct therapy for AIDS using complete medium chain saturated fatty acids from whole foods. She is Vice-President of the Weston A Price Foundation and Scientific Editor of Wise Traditions as well as the author of Know Your Fats: The Complete Primer for Understanding the Nutrition of Fats, Oils, and Cholesterol, Bethesda Press, May 2000. She is the mother of three healthy children brought up on whole foods including butter, cream, eggs and meat. See her website at http://www.enig.com/trans.html.

Sally Fallon is the author of Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats (with Mary G. Enig, PhD), a well-researched, thought-provoking guide to traditional foods with a startling message: Animal fats and cholesterol are not villains but vital factors in the diet, necessary for normal growth, proper function of the brain and nervous system, protection from disease and optimum energy levels. She joined forces with Enig again to write Eat Fat, Lose Fat, and has authored numerous articles on the subject of diet and health. The President of the Weston A. Price Foundation and founder of A Campaign for Real Milk, Sally is also a journalist, chef, nutrition researcher, homemaker, and community activist. Her four healthy children were raised on whole foods including butter, cream, eggs and meat.

This article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts,
the quarterly magazine of the Weston A. Price Foundation, SPRING 2004.

http://www.mercola.com/article/statins.htm

With at least 12 million Americans taking cholesterol-lowering drugs, mostly statins, and experts’ recommendations that another 23 million should be taking them, it’s important to remain educated on this issue, the primary one being that they’re linked to many, many dangerous side effects.

Statins currently available on the U.S. market include:

• Lipitor (atorvastatin) - Pfizer
• Zocor (simvastatin) - Merck
• Pravachol (pravastatin) - Bristol-Myers Squibb
• Lescol (fluvastatin) - Novartis
• Mevacor (lovastatin) - Merck
• Crestor (rosuvastatin) - AstraZeneca

Click on the individual drug names above to view their prescribing information, commonly known as the “package inserts.”

Cholesterol is NOT the Cause of Heart Disease

http://www.thegreatcholesterolcon.com/

Renegade Australian researcher reveals
 Why Your Fear of Cholesterol
Could Be Killing You

———- click on link for full article —–0

http://www.spacedoc.net/lipitor_side_effects.htm

( the Author of this article is former Former USAF Flight Surgeon and Former NASA Astronaut)

Downsides of this Statin Drug
( Atorvastatin Calcium )

With many years of statin experience behind us, few clinicians would argue the effectiveness of the statin class of drugs in reducing cardiovascular disease risk.

In my book, I discuss the reasons for this broad range of devastating side effects. The mevalonate pathway, critical to statins inhibition of cholesterol, is the pathway used by many other vital body functions. From CoQ10, to dolichols, to normal phosphorylation and to selenoprotein synthesis, all are affected by statins’ broad reach. Side effects on muscle, nerve and memory functions are not some extremely rare, almost unique, problem. They are all but inevitable with the use of mevalonate inhibitors.

Here are a few of the reports I have received from readers of my books and this website regarding personal experiences of Lipitor Side Effects.

Statins and CoQ10 Deficiency
( Also known as Coenzyme Q10 - Q10
Co-enzyme Q10 – Ubiquinone )

The adult human body pool of this substance has been reported to be 2 grams, and requires replacement of about 0.5 gram per day. This must be supplied by endogenous synthesis or dietary intake. Synthesis decreases progressively in humans above age 21, and the average ubiquinone content of the western diet is less than 5 mg/day. Thus, Co-enzyme Q10 supplementation appears to be the only way for older people to obtain their daily need of this important nutrient.

Nearly 40 million people will be taking Lipitor this year in the United States alone, with an additional 20 million taking other types of statin drugs of comparable effect. Most of these people will be over 50 years of age and few of them will be on supplemental CoQ10. Simple logic dictates that the statin drug impact on CoQ10 availability and mitochondrial energy production will be profound.

The heart is usually the first to feel statin associated CoQ10 depletion because of its extremely high energy demands. Physicians are seeing this as cardiomyopathy and congestive heart failure but chronic fatigue is also being reported and we must remember that every cell in the body is dependent upon adequate energy reserves.

In addition to its critically important role in energy production, CoQ10 has a possibly even greater role within the mitochondria as an anti-oxidant, with a free radical-quenching ability some 50 times greater than that of vitamin E.

A growing body of evidence indicates that genetic injury in mitochondria may also play a role in the aging process, and in the chronic degenerative diseases, which we encounter in later life. Ongoing research fully documents the reality that our energy production declines and somatic mitochondrial DNA mutations increase as we grow older. The activity of certain of our respiratory protein complexes has been found to fall with age within the brain, skeletal muscles, heart and liver.

Additionally, various rearrangement mutations in mitochondrial DNA are noted more commonly in aging brain tissue (especially memory areas and motor sites), as well as skeletal & heart muscle. Few of these mutations reach detectable levels before age 40, but they increase exponentially after that. In the absence of sufficient CoQ10 this entire process is accelerated.

Although Baycol was recently removed from the market because of its association with excessive deaths from rhabdomyolysis, deaths from this extreme form of muscle cell breakdown still are being reported since all statins share this tendency.

It should be added that muscle damage with its at times disabling aches and pains remains the most commonly reported side effect of statin drugs use. It is nothing but collateral damage in our misguided war on cholesterol.

MORE ON CO-ENZYME Q10

Many of you have heard me speak of the value of CoQ10 in congestive heart failure. Belardinelli and others gave additional documentation recently in a paper (1) published in the European heart Journal. Recognizing the natural decline in plasma coenzyme Q10 with age and failing hearts, the authors set up a study to determine whether this could be improved by oral CoQ10 to improve both cardiocirculatory efficiency and endothelial function.

They studied 23 patients (20 men, three women, mean age 59±9 years) with stable congestive heart failure secondary to coronary artery disease. A double-blind, placebo-controlled cross-over design was used. Patients were assigned to each of the following treatments: oral CoQ10 (100 mg three times daily), CoQ10 plus supervised exercise training (ET) five times a week), placebo, and placebo plus ET. Each phase lasted 4 weeks. Both peak O2 take-up and endothelium-dependent dilation of the brachial artery (EDDBA) improved significantly after CoQ10 and after ET as compared with placebo. CoQ10 supplementation resulted in a four-fold increase in plasma CoQ10 level, whereas the combination with ET further increased it. No side effects were reported with CoQ10.

The authors concluded that supplemental CoQ10 improves functional capacity, endothelial function, and left ventricular contractility in congestive heart failure without any side effects. The combination of CoQ10 and ET resulted in higher plasma CoQ10 levels and more pronounced effects on all the above-mentioned parameters.

I cite this study to support my thoughts concerning CoQ10 supplementation by those currently taking or proposing to take statin drugs of any kind. Crestor use can be associated with an up to a 50% reduction in cholesterol synthesis and other brands such as Lipitor, Vytorin and Zocor often give cholesterol reductions of over 40%.

In my own case using Lipitor, 10mg daily, my cholesterol plunged from 275 to 150 in a matter of a few short weeks. Statin drugs work by inhibition of the reductase step of the mevalonate path, which unfortunately is at the very beginning of this branching tree of biochemical reactions. In effect, it girds the tree to achieve cholesterol reduction. I want to emphasize that with this dramatic effect on the mevalonate pathway to achieve decreased cholesterol synthesis, comparable reductions in CoQ10 are inevitable for it is just another branch of the tree.

If by some miracle the anti-inflammatory effect of statin drugs could be achieved by a different biochemical mechanism than mevalonate pathway manipulation I might never have had reason to write my Lipitor, Thief of Memory and Statin Drugs Side Effect books. Nearly all of the serious side effects of statin drugs are caused by this collateral damage to vital biochemical components of the mevalonate pathway.
Dr. Peter Langsjoen, a cardiologist in Tyler, Texas has been researching for years the effects of CoQ10 supplementation in his statin associated congestive heart failure patients and has published widely on this subject (2). 

(1) Belardinelli R and others. Coenzyme Q10 and exercise training in chronic heart failure. European Heart Journal, July 2006
(2) Langsjoen PH, Langsjoen AM. Overview of the use of CoQ10 in Heart Disease. Cardiovascular Disease Biofactors 9:273-85, 1999

Duane Graveline MD MPH
Former USAF Flight Surgeon
Former NASA Astronaut
Retired Family Doctor

a “miracle from God “( for you ‘believers’) if you will… open your eyes and learn!!  Be Healthy!

You are what you eat, so eat well, and true.   A stupendous insight of civilizations past has now been confirmed by today’s investigative, nutritional sciences. They have shown that what was once called “The Doctrine of Signatures” was astoundingly correct. It now contends that every whole food has a pattern that resembles a body organ or physiological function and that this pattern acts as a signal or sign as to the benefit the food provides the eater. Here is just a short list of examples of Whole Food Signatures.

A sliced Carrot looks like the human eye. The pupil, iris and radiating lines look just like the human eye…and science shows that carrots greatly enhance blood flow to (and enhance function of ) the eyes.

A Tomato has four chambers and is red. The heart is red and has four chambers. All of the research shows tomatoes are indeed pure heart and blood food.

Grapes hang in a cluster that has the shape of the heart. Each grape looks like a blood cell and all of the research today shows that grapes are also profound heart and blood vitalizing food. 

A Walnut looks like a little brain, a left and right hemisphere, upper cerebrums and lower cerebellums. Even the wrinkles or folds are on the nut just like the neo-cortex. We now know that walnuts help develop over 3 dozen neuron-transmitters for brain function.  

Kidney Beans actually heal and help maintain kidney function and yes, they look exactly like the human kidneys.

 
Celery, Bok Choy, Rhubarb and more look just like bones. These foods specifically target bone strength. Bones are 23% sodium and these foods are 23% sodium. If you don’t have enough sodium in your diet the body pulls it from the bones, making them weak. These foods replenish the skeletal needs of the body.  

Eggplant, Avocadoes and Pears target the health and function of the womb and cervix of the female - they look just like these organs. Today’s research shows that when a woman eats 1 avocado a week, it balances hormones, sheds unwanted birth weight and prevents cervical cancers. And how profound is this? …. It takes exactly 9 months to grow an avocado from blossom to ripened fruit. There are over 14,000 photolytic chemical constituents of nutrition in each one of these foods (modern science has only studied and named about 141 of them).

 Avocados also contain a phytochemical called lutein that protects the prostate and ovaries from acids that cause cancer.

Figs are full of seeds and hang in twos when they grow. Figs increase the motility of male sperm and increase the numbers of sperm as well to overcome male sterility.

Sweet Potatoes look like the pancreas and actually balance the glycemic index of diabetics.

Olives assist the health and function of the ovaries and testes.
Grapefruits, Oranges, and other citrus fruits look just like the mammary glands of the female and actually assist the health of the breasts and the movement of lymph in and out of the breasts.

Onions look like body cells. Today’s research shows that onions help clear waste materials from all of the body cells They even produce tears which wash the epithelial layers of the eyes.

“The news isn’t that fruits and vegetables are good for you, it’s that they are so good for you, they can save your life.” David Bjerklie, TIME Magazine, Oct. 2003

 STORY OF THE WEEK

Body fuel: the colour of life

Green
Broccoli.

Yellow
Turmeric.

Orange
Dried apricots.

Red
Tomatoes.

Dark red/purple
Beetroot.

Black/blue
Black grapes. Contain boron to help calcium absorption, as well as antioxidants which fight heart disease. Whether this means grape juice is as heart healthy as red wine isn’t clear — both are good, but science is still working out which works best.
Prunes. A good source of phosphorus for healthy bones, some iron and potassium to help regulate blood pressure. Also a good source of fibre.
Olives. Their monounsaturated fat helps lower cholesterol.
Blueberries. With one of the highest antioxidant scores of all fruit, these are worth eating all year round (frozen if you can’t find fresh). Like cranberries, they also contain anti-bacterial compounds that help fight cystitis.

Health control with Fibre Intake

Nutritional products are not intended or implied to be used to prevent, diagnose, cure or alleviate illnesses or diseases. They are simply complementary medicines which are intended to optimise health and general well-being. If  you buy products through a company, especially a network marketing organization, you  should never express or imply that these products are able to replace a general practitioner’s care or recommended treatment therapy; the products are available to complement, not replace traditional, prescribed medicines.

Many of these products may be classified as Therapeutic Goods  by the Australian government’s TGA (Therapeutic Goods Authority). Therapeutic goods are those that are represented in any way to be, or that are, for a therapeutic use of any kind. Therapeutic Use means use in connection with preventing, diagnosing, curing or alleviating a disease, ailment, defect or injury in persons, or influencing, inhibiting or modifying a physiological process. This means that statements, claims and advertising for these  products must comply with the Therapeutic Goods Act, Regulations and Advertising Codes of Australia.

A therapeutic claim or indication in relation to therapeutic goods means the specific therapeutic uses of the goods.

Australia has different levels of claims: general, medium and high. Since many health products are created and promoted to optimise health and general well-being, the producing company is authorised to make general level claims. A general level claim includes health maintenance, vitamin and mineral supplementation, and relief of symptoms, but not of a

named disease. For instance, a claim that “product X”  maintains general well-being is a general level claim.

The companies  are permitted to make limited medium level claims for some of their products. These claims are set out in the company’s product descriptions and literature, specified for use in Australia. Associates and members of these companies (this is what you become when you sign up to order the products) must not make any other medium level claims.

These companies are prohibited from making high level claims, and can only make claims about minor-self-limiting conditions. In addition, all claims must be true, valid and not misleading, and they must be supported by adequate evidence.

Due to these conditions, Policies & Procedures Manuals of most companies state that Associates & members  must not make any claims which have not been approved by the relevant Company, or use disease-specific names when selling or promoting the products, or when meeting with prospective Associates, or in notices of public opportunity meetings. Associates are only

allowed to make those claims which are included on the product label or in Company-supplied materials.

Statements such as “Can heal MS, Chronic Fatigue, Asthma, Arthritis, Autism and even reverse the effect of genetic disease such as Downs Syndrome” breach the Act and the Code. Such statements must NOT BE MADE.

The following article was written by John Toomey  ( see reference and contact details above in the “WATER” article). His site has numerous eye-opening informative articles on health. Please click in and sign up as a subscriber!

Cancer Demystified (by John  Toomey)

Why is Cancer so mysterious? After all these years, surely we, the public, should have a clearer understanding of this disease, what it is, how it occurs, how to prevent it and how to treat it.

The cold hard realities are shocking. To date, since Richard Nixon declared War on Cancer in 1971, over $2 trillion has been spent searching for a cure. And what has been the result? Consider the following facts:

? Cancer is now the number two killer in the western world.

? The incidence of many cancers, like Bowel, Prostate and Breast Cancers are still increasing, some by up to 10% per annum.

? The Journal of the American Medical Association reports that the prognosis of cancer patients has not improved since the 1950’s. If any improvement has occurred, it can simply be related to the fact that we have better screening techniques and that cancers are consequently detected earlier, not because we have more effective treatments.

? Even the latest chemotherapy drugs, when tested and assessed in the real world of ‘day-to-day’ cancer treatment, have only a 17-27% success rate.

? Once you have cancer, fighting it is difficult as the cancer cells have the capacity to mutate and adapt to the agents sent into the body to kill them. This is why chemotherapy can be so unreliable.

Cancer is still out of control.

So who is in Control?

There is little money spent on prevention programs. Still, our medical establishment tells us that the best defense against cancer is early detection. Now I hate to be a cynic, but this approach certainly keeps the cash registers ticking over in the many thousand medical practices around the country, but it isn’t really solving the cancer problem.

Countless research articles have pointed to diet, exercise and other lifestyle factors in reducing the risk of cancer. Why don’t we hear more about them? Why don’t we see government campaigns, similar in size and impact to road trauma campaigns, telling us about lifestyle habits that will reduce our cancer risk? Simply, there are some crazy decisions being made at government level.

As you well know, the most powerful lobby groups get the bulk of a government’s attention. I have heard medical specialists state that it is dangerous to give people false hope about lifestyle changes reducing the risk of cancer until it can be proven, beyond all doubt, that it will work. Does that sound a little stupid to you when you consider that there isn’t a cancer drug on the market that has yet to be proven, beyond all doubt, to work?

I cannot help but see vested interests here.

You may not be aware that the only people in Australia legally allowed to treat cancer are oncologists. Naturopaths, Chinese physicians and other highly trained health care professionals are not allowed to treat cancer? I find that bizarre in a free market economy. If a patient wishes to receive treatment from one of these Health Professionals, the chosen professional must first write to the Oncologist and gain approval.

In 2002, the NSW Minister for Health has stated that his Government will crack down on “miracle cures” and misleading health claims and advertisements to protect people who are sick and vulnerable. It has established a committee to do this job.

The committee is headed by Chairman Professor John Dwyer and Cheryl Freeman and unidentified others. The purpose of this group, it appears, is to outlaw any form of complementary medicine that is not accepted by mainstream medicine. To date it appears that there will be no right of appeal to any decision that they unilaterally make.

Already banned are homoeopathic vaccines and a number of other highly effective therapies. Also in the firing line is any form of frequency medicine such as garlic and echinacea.

Much to my disappointment, this group is apparently funded by Dick Smith, a person I have admired greatly for a long time.

As far as I have been able to gather, the committee intends to recommend a change in the law to stop any doctor involved in complementary medicine and initiate a public education campaign against alternative health.

Sources also tell me that both Professor Dwyer and Ms Freeman are members of the skeptics association and are long term adversaries of complementary medicine.

So, I ask, what led the NSW government to form this committee? Where did the pressure come from? Who drove it? To me, it smacks of pharmaceutical industry lobbyists working to protect their multi-billion dollar industry.

How much money would these people lose if the incidence of cancer dropped by 10% over the next year? They have a great deal to lose if a cure is, in fact, found.

At the end of the day, the partnership between Western Medicine, particularly the Oncology profession, and the Pharmaceutical Industry is as strong as it is powerful. These people have a bloody minded approach. It is almost as if they cannot find the cure, they don’t want anyone else to.

What’s more important, the Cure or the Cause?

My response to them is simply, “Go and keep searching for your magic silver bullet”. I am more interested in what causes cancer and what feeds the growth of a tumor once it has established itself.

Medical science has been around for several hundred years. The body and its functions have been well known for at least a couple of hundred years and since early in the 1800’s, medical scientists have taken a keen interest in the causes of death, even performing autopsies on people who died mysteriously.

Up until early in the 20^th century, cancers were extremely rare and heart disease was almost unheard of. What has changed since then? Consider the following:

? We exercise less

? We eat less raw, fresh plant foods

? We eat more cooked and over cooked foods

? We eat many more highly refined, less nutritious foods

? We consume a vast array of chemicals and food additives

? We drink less clean, fresh water and consume vast volumes of processed beverages instead.

? We consume powerful hormones without a second thought, not paying any attention to the possible disruptions to normal hormonal balance and function

? We spend less time talking, sharing and laughing with friends and family

? We spent much less time contributing meaningfully to and building our community

? We spend less time in prayer, meditation or deep contemplation

? We are often bored and feel trapped

? We do not honor our body and do not practice regular cleansing protocols such as the abstinence practices of the Christian religions during lent

? We have become more highly materialistic and less spiritual

? We have become creatures of convenience and comfort

Perhaps it is worthwhile looking at these issues to find out how we can turn back the clock and decrease our risk of cancers.

The Flick of the Switch

Much of the research indicates that a cancer begins to grow when a genetic mutation occurs. Genetic mutation is one of those terms that can leave you a little bamboozled. It almost leads you to consider the possibility that the human body is defective and that one of these defects can “kick in” at any time. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

When extreme duress is applied to bodily tissues, they will react and perhaps be forced into a mutation, stimulating some form of tissue growth. If that tissue continues to grow unchecked, it may then interfere with the functions of organs or it may spread to other parts of the body, interfering at that point. These growths may lead to a level of obstruction where normal life can be drastically effected or even ended.

There are many theories as to why these growths occur. One group of scientists ran contaminated blood through a tumor and it came out the other side purified. They then drew the conclusion that perhaps the tumor is being formed to help clean up a toxic body.

Others have theorised that cancer is a healing response that has not been terminated at completion of healing because of poor pancreatic function (probably due to poor general health). This theory relates to the healing process of any wound in the body, large or small.

Both of these theories are very credible. Both give a reason why that genetic switch is ‘flicked’ and a mutation of genes occurs.

So I ask you the question. “Can we avoid the switch being flicked? Can we live a life without being concerned about the risk of getting cancer?”

Viruses, Parasites, Moulds and Fungal Infections

There is much credible research indicating a role being played by viruses and parasites in the onset of cancer. Many medical researchers believe very strongly that the ‘genetic mutation’ occurs in direct response to the work of a virus. Others believe that it is the work of a parasite that ‘flicks the switch’.

Certainly, when our body becomes unhealthy, we begin to harbor all sorts of viruses, bacteria, parasites, moulds and fungal infections. The greater the infestation of these microbes, the more likely we will in some way suffer from disease. Once disease sets in, we have a battle on our hands to ‘fight’ it off.

But can it be that the presence of these microbes is more aligned to the “Fire Engines cause Fires” theory. If you have not heard of this statement before, it is a broadside at modern science as a great deal of modern research looks for common elements and labels them “indicators”. Following this line the statement argues that, because there is always a fire engine when there is a fire; could a fire engine be a causative factor in a fire. In the same vein, can it simply be that the existence of these microbes, like the onset of a cancer, is simply a response to the state of the body’s health.

Simply, when the body is polluted, these invaders appear whilst at the same time, the pollution is interrupting the distribution of oxygen and vital nutrients and minerals. Disease is not far away, but whether or not the invaders are the cause is a subject for further investigation.

But when this infestation occurs, western medicine’s response is to attack the invaders, as opposed to treating the environment to make it inhospitable to the invader. Imagine dumping your garbage outside your lounge room window. As the days go by, and the garbage begins to rot, flies would begin to appear, followed by all sorts of other insects, rodents and birds. When they became too overwhelming, you could use insecticides on the insects, poison the rats and shoot the birds to restore your peace. But in doing so, your relief would be temporary. They would soon be back. If however, your removed the garbage, the invaders would not have an environment off which they could thrive.

When illness strikes, we endure a great deal of discomfort and interruption to our own lives. We are required to draw upon all of our reserves of self discipline to get ourselves well again.

I ask, why not draw upon that discipline now and do the things you need to do to get your body to a state where these invaders cannot exist?

Having explained all of these things however, there is another much more credible explanation for Cancer which carries on from the “pollution” theory described above.

Where has all the Oxygen Gone?

Back before the industrial revolution, the level of Oxygen (O₂) in the earth’s atmosphere ranged between 38% and 50%. That level has now dropped to less than 28% and in some places like major cities it has been measured well below 20%.

O₂ is critical to the survival of the human body. Just try holding your head under water for 30 seconds or more. Your body cannot do without this vital element. But, what happens if your body gets enough O₂ to survive but doesn’t get enough to serve all the needs of the body, particularly at cellular level.

http://bernhardracz.com/?p=12 Magnets and their use in maintaining health 

The Chinese and Japanese are masters for 5,000 years of harmony and our electric life force. They have traced our electric meridian pathways, as you know from acupuncture and acupressure. Tried and true, they work, and magnets have a direct effect on this system and have been used successfully for health improvement . Read this – great information for all, especially diabetics. The major supplier of quality magnetic health products ( from Japan ) has an office in Sydney, and one of their distributors is based in Gosford.

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Magnets and their use in maintaining health

Magnets have had a long history in being used to improve health. Acupuncture works on the meridian line principle of electrical energy in the body.

Remember that we are born in a magnetic field, produced by the earth’s rotation. The Van Allen Radiation Belt that creates the Northern and Southern Lights  is caused by the friction of the sun’s winds which travel and hit the earth at 186,000 miles per hour; This protective belt is caused by the earth’s spin, thus creating the magnetic field which  protects us from the solar winds ( otherwise we’d be like Mars, where the atmosphere and soil is blown into space!).

If the spin slows, or if there is an increase or decrease in the speed of the solar wind ( such as when ‘sun spots’ appear) then our magnetic field changes ( why sometimes birds simply drop out of the sky, having lost all their natural GPS bearings and ability to detect the electric field they use to guide them ( as it has probably suddenly vanished or been disrupted). In the same way, phone systems and computers are all vulnerable to the solar activity.

This magnetic field is essential for our health and survival. Anything that disrupts it, will affect us. Several layers of concrete ( for you office workers) block the strength of the field! Office workers are generally less healthy than those who work on the land.

I have an articles with some great information on uses that are of great interest, and I have an article on the effects of magnetic insoles on peripheral neuropathy, so for diabetics this is a “MUST READ” item…

This product is available from a company which also has offices and a showroom  in Sydney. Other products are one of the best water filtration systems available, magnetic bedding, rollout massage items, and therapeutic magnetic bracelets, ear-rings, necklaces, elbow, wrist and knee guards etc ( as used by many top athletes)

The Chinese have been masters of meridian lines via acupuncture etc for 5,000 years. They simply tune into and channel your magnetic field. Any country that can produce a Bruce Lee or two and which has a population that still looks 40 years old when they are 80 must be on the right track!

I have an article on the improvements to circulation in the legs of diabetics (diabetes can result in gangrene from decreased circulation in legs!) through using proper magnetic insoles.

Contact me on  bnamedia@msn for more information and company contacts

Angelina Jolly  and Brad Pitt don’t look so good just from sitting in front of a computer all day! Your immune system works better with exercise, as does the rest of your body! I have information on one of the simplest and best methods – straight from NASA archives!

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The following item from Tip of the Week  by NaturalCures.com